Carie & Eric

Although Carie Fowler has always been a winter enthusiast, she has the Seattle summer weather to thank for her introduction to husband, Eric Antonelli. The two met on her parents’ dock at a party in July 2001 and dated for two months; it was “the perfect 17-year-old summer,” Carie remembers. College and careers took the two lovebirds to different sides of the country, and it wasn’t until they both migrated back to the West Coast and Eric became a department manager for Carie’s family’s business—the waterworks, irrigation and pump distributor H.D. Fowler Company—in 2008 that the two picked up where they had left off.

After a surprise proposal in the bathroom two years later (“He asked me while I was doing my mascara,” says 28-year-old Carie, with a laugh), the couple was ready to start planning their big day. Choosing a location was a no-brainer; the Fairmont Olympic Hotel had always been a sentimental favorite, having been the location of Carie’s debutante ball, to which Eric, now 31, escorted her 11 years earlier. Carie, vice president at H.D. Fowler, turned to the approaching January weather as her creative inspiration. “I didn’t want to be forcing big, colorful garlands of summer blooms,” she explains. With the help of wedding planner Lisa Chambers, plus florist and décor expert Steven Moore, the Fairmont was transformed into an elegant winter wonderland, complete with delicate pink and white blossoms, glowing candles and icicle-thin ghost chairs.

On the evening of January 14, booming orchestral music echoed throughout the Spanish Ballroom as the wedding processional began. As the music reached its vibrant crescendo, the bride’s final touch was revealed: a flurry of faux snow began to fall from the ceiling. As tiny flakes cascaded down, the bride beamed within her own personal snow globe as she made her way down the aisle. A family friend officiated at the ceremony, with the couple standing before a maple-and-reclaimed-steel altar crafted by the groom himself. (In lieu of a traditional guestbook, friends and family signed the underside of the slab after the ceremony.)

Oysters have always been the couple’s favorite indulgence, so guests were treated to a meal of all things seafood, including a raw bar at cocktail hour, and decadent crab cakes and crab mac and cheese later in the evening. After the bride changed out of her gown and into her frothy party dress, guests danced for hours and indulged in a late-night snack of Dick’s burgers before grabbing to-go boxes of decadent butter cream cake and heading off to their rooms. As a perfect ending to the weekend, the city was covered in a blanket of real, shimmering snow the next morning. For their honeymoon, the newlyweds took a break from the winter weather and sunbathed on the beaches of Tanzania.